My little critters are spoiled. They get all sorts of varieties of food. It is best to feed them guinea pig pellets, chinchilla pellets, or you can feed them the rodent blocks; however they do not enjoy just eating those. You can also give them all, give them a little variety they seem to like that. I also give mine alfalfa and timothy hay.

They like to chew on apple tree twigs, pear twigs, dandelions, rose petals and leaves, grass, and other flower petals. However, DO NOT give them rhodenren plants, they are highly toxic to them.

The Degu is a herbivorous animal and do not need to add any animal albumens to his food. In nature, he eats various plants, bulbs, farm crop (because of this they are considered to be a pest), leaves and bark from trees and bushes. Try to give them similar food. Don't give degus much sugars, carbohydrates and fats. This means no cookies as a treat at all! Most people don't know much about degus and give them mixture for rodents consisting of corn, cereals (too much carbohydrates), sunflower seeds (too much fats) or dried fruit (sugar). If you give much of this food to degus, you can cause very serious problems to them which are similar to diabetes. But you can give them fresh fruits because it doesn't contain enough sugar to harm degus.

FRESH VEGETABLES AND FRUITS

Lettuce, carrot, broccoli, cucumber (skins), cauliflower, a piece of tomato tomato or some other vegetable that your degu like (as far as I can tell, they all have different appetites from each other). If you don't have vegetables and fruits from your own garden, they could have been chemically treated. Degus can get diarrhoea from that, so wash it properly before you give it to degus.

TREATS - just once or twice a week:

Dried carrot - I noticed that degus sometimes don't like fresh carrot, but they love dried ones (slice a carrot to make circles and let it dry for about 3 days). Although carrot contains some sugar, it is the best of all these treats because it contains only a little sugar. So unlike the other treats you can give it to them a couple of times a day.

Carrot, potato or vegetable juice - you can buy it in health shops, but watch carefully so that the juice doesn't contain any sugar. If it is too dense, dilute the juice with a little water. Put the juice into a bottle (the one you use to give water to your degus). The degus like it so much they will drink it all at once. Also:

seed block (you can buy it in pet shops)

a few of sunflower or dorn seeds

any nut, the best are in shell

a piece of apple or another not very sweet fruit

a piece of dried and hard pastry

Raisens

Peanuts

You should also be careful of another thing: even if their dish is empty it does not mean they've eaten everything. They like to bury the food and store it. When you clean the cage and see some food buried, give them less of it.

Furthermore, you have to give fresh water to the degus - the best is bottle water or boiled water. Put it into a bottle on attached to the outside of the cage, so they can get some water whenever they want to. You can also put the water in a dish or bowl, but degus can get some sawdust in it, so you would have to change it more often. Degus need water all the time. Be careful to keep it fresh and clean. Change it every day to avoid any infections - if the water isn't fresh, bacteria could multiply in there.

Interesting tip: into the bottle (1,5 l) of water give half a tablet of calcium or vitamin C (vitamin C is only viable for 8-10 hours and becomes inert when exposed to light so if you use vitamin C, you must change the water daily and use dark coloured bottle). Degus get vitamins and minerals from it, but the water might smells a little (special drops with vitamin C for rodents smells badly).

Food and water have to be given in room temperature, not right from the refrigerator.